a life

Category: Recipes

Just about the weirdest allergy I have is rice. I’ve eaten it all my life and will continue to eat it. Even though it’s like giving milk to a lactose intolerant. I call it jet fuel. Not sure about the people around me, but mostly I don’t mind it. I’m so used to it because I’ve been eating it all my life and dealing with the consequences. In fact, I thought everyone bloated after eating. But now that I know the cause I do try to limit it. Granted when I’m traveling and Chinese is the only option I have, well, let’s just say I could start a forest fire with my ass.

That’s the long way of saying this is how I came up with my new “rice” which is quinoa, cauliflower, lentils, and oatmeal. It cooks up like a gloopy blob of “rice” and I can have it with just about anything I would have with rice.

I have been making this regularly for the past few months. It makes an easy vegetable side dish that goes with everything savory. Noodles, rice, tofu, avocado toast.

Chop up a bag of red onions.

Boil salt, sugar and water. Let it cool. Add apple cider vinegar to the brine. Pour it over the sliced onions. Refrigerate for a couple of days and it’s ready to eat. I keep two jars going all the time. The brine is re-useable, but I top off with more brine each time because I use the brine in salad dressings and for avocado toast.

If I had to guess amounts, maybe 2 tablespoons of sea salt, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and 3 cups of water. And a half cup of ACV. I could be totally off here. Just experiment.

My neighbors moved away. I miss them. During our last get together, they brought over a breakfast ring filled with a veggie tofu scramble. We had it with some coffee. The breakfast ring was so yumm-o! And a fine reminder of the neighbors. Sigh.

Anyway, on with the food.

Any vegetables will do. Just dice them and stir fry them.
I added carrots, celery, onions(mirepoix!), mushrooms, zucchini, jalapeno, garlic, and frozen corn.

Crumble the tofu over the stir-fried vegetables.

Season with salt, pepper, turmeric, cumin, and nutritional yeast.

This would be the filling for the breakfast ring if I got pastry in a can, but the filling alone is delicious.

I’ve been making this for a few weeks now and we still haven’t tired of it. I love the crunchiness of the walnuts and the rich flavor.

Broccoli (two or three heads of it)

Tempeh

Hot sauce

Soy sauce

Walnuts – raw, unroasted

cooking oil (optional)

By the way, tempeh is a block of fermented beans and/or grains.
It’s firm and mostly flavorless so it can take on whatever flavor you put in your dish. I like to cut it up smaller to increase the surface area to suck up the flavor. It will mostly keep its shape because it’s firmer than tofu. Tempeh is optional. The first time I made this, I just had a bunch of broccoli that didn’t fit into the lentil stew I was making. The broccoli was chopped and I didn’t know what to do with it so I stir fried it with walnuts. That’s how I stumbled on this dish. I only started adding tempeh because the next time I was making it, I had a package of tempeh I didn’t know what to do with. This is the unplanned kind of cooking I do. It’s very willy nilly.

Chop up the broccoli and let it cook for a bit first.
I like to add water to help cook and soften the broccoli because I like my broccoli cooked soft. Oil is optional. Add the hot sauce and soy sauce after the broccoli’s halfway done.

Now add the tempeh to start sucking up the flavor.

Walnuts need very little cooking time. I add them in, stir it around a bit then turn the heat off to let the residual heat finish it.

The walnuts really make this dish. They add a rich layer of flavor and crunchy texture. Yum. I like to have this over quinoa or rice or it’s good just by itself too.

Here’s how good this stuff is. I don’t clean my shower for months. MONTHS!! Maybe 6 months? Yeah. I told you I took a hiatus from cleaning. You think I’m kidding? I don’t kid when I’m having important TV time. Anyway, this stuff made cleaning the shower a breeze.

I learned it from Pinterest.

Dawn dish soap (the original blue stuff, but I got Target generic version which seemed to work fine)

Cleaning vinegar (Not white eating vinegar; this stuff, while still safe to handle, has higher acidity than eating vinegar. I found it in the cleaning products aisle at Home Depot.)

Two ingredients. That’s it. Mix it in a spray bottle. The Pinterest instructions said to use warm vinegar so I microwaved it for a few seconds first. I’m not sure if that makes a difference. Anyway, spray it all over the shower, leave it on for an hour or so. Come back and scrub. Rinse. Re-scrub any remaining scum that you missed. It pretty much comes right off. I used to exert a lot of energy cleaning the shower. That’s why I dragged my feet about it, because it was so strenuous and tiring. But this stuff really made the job super duper easy and the shower sparkles like new. And mostly not too toxic as cleaning products go.

I found a bunch of recipes for vegan alfredo online and mixed them up for this:

1 head of cauliflower

1.5 cups of raw cashews, soaked in water for a few hours

1 onion

6 cloves of garlic

lemon juice (1 lemon) – I didn’t have this so I substituted with apple cider vinegar, and it was fine.

Nutritional yeast

Salt and pepper. One can never have too much pepper in alfredo sauce.

I don’t remember where I got the idea or learned that alfredo requires mucho pepper. The first time I had it was from a local Kentuckian chain Italian restaurant and a strong pepper flavor stuck out to me. I know. Kentucky, Italian. This was a memorably good alfredo pasta though. I think I ate an entire family sized bucket of it in a couple of days. And it was over a decade ago and I still have fond memories of that bucket of pasta. Who doesn’t enjoy a nice bucket of pasta?

Stir fry the garlic and onions with a bit of salt and oil.

Cut up the cauliflower into big chunks and poach it in maybe an inch of water with some seasoning. I used a vegetable broth powder, but regular salt and pepper is fine.

In a blender, blend the ingredients together.

I added more nutritional yeast at the end to have a richer flavor. I also added about a tablespoon of cracked black pepper. I would have added more but my wrists were tired from the grinding.

Simmer the sauce over low heat for about 30 minutes. Stir the entire time and cover it with a lid. Keep the lid over the pot as you move a spoon around in there because this thick sauce tends to spurt bubbles all over the place.

I like to serve it over pasta with green peas. It’s rich and creamy without the after effects of eating rich and creamy. I could eat a bucket of this sauce.

Prepare rice like you normally would (in a rice cooker).
I like to add red lentils in my rice.
Add one whole tomato in the middle.
Add pepper.
Add a drizzle of oil.
Once cooked, break up the tomato and stir it in the rice. It’s easy and delicious!

I’ve known about using frozen bananas to make (n)ice cream for a long long time, even before I stopped eating dairy. The first time I heard about it was on a TV show where Jerry Seinfeld’s wife said this is how she makes healthy treats for their kids. I filed it away in my brain but never made it because I’m not a big fan of ice cream anyway. And why have frozen bananas when I could just get store bought?

People, this is not your average ice cream. It’s better.

First, I recommend using organic bananas.
Let them ripen until they have spots.

Freeze the bananas: Wash and remove the stem and end, leaving the rest of the banana peel on.
Cut into quarters, then freeze them.

In a blender, add almond or some other dairy-free milk, the frozen bananas, and an avocado if you want it extra creamy and rich.

For flavoring, I’ve had good luck with cocoa powder (use a lot! Then add more), cinnamon (a little), and liqueur (optional) and peanut butter.
The cocoa powder and peanut butter are essential in my opinion.

Blend it up then put it in a bowl and freeze it again.
Now you have nice cream. It reminds me of Chunky Monkey.